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The park, he said, would be called Festival Tennessee, and it would cost around $750 million. On these bucolic 1,500 acres, there would be two resort hotels with 4,000 rooms apiece. There would be 80 restaurants and clubs, as well as one of the largest water parks in the United States. And a stadium. And, with any luck, an NBA franchise. And a television production studio. Also, a charter school.

Mr. Peterson estimated that Festival Tennessee would create 15,000 jobs, maybe even 20,000. And, he said, it would be open in less than two years.

One small hiccup: The company that’s supposed to put all of this together just had its license revoked in Nevada, and its president has filed for bankruptcy. Also its treasurer says she’s never heard of the company. Also one of Lanley’s Peterson’s advisers is currently on parole for “child sexually abusive material.” Also, a previous plan to get Michael Jackson to narrate an animated film about an orphan “who saves the world with the help of some endangered species” failed (note: we kind of want to see this movie).

Ok, so, maybe not the best investment for Spring Hill, Tennessee. But Festival Tennessee reminded me of another, slightly less scammy but magnificently audacious would-be destination: Excel Communications founder Steve Smith’s plan to build a billionaires’ resort in Lajitas, Texas. Per John Spong:

His ambition grew ever more glorious by the day: eight hundred residential lots of two acres or less, some selling for as much as $1 million, undeveloped; two championship golf courses, not desert-style, with grass growing only on greens and tees, but with a lush wall-to-wall carpet that would need a million gallons of water a day to stay green in summer months; an RV park with $100,000 slips for $500,000 motor homes; a 36,000-square-foot spa; four fancy restaurants; an amphitheater seating three thousand; an equestrian center; a hunting club…

Hundreds of trees, including pears and plums that had no business being in the desert, were ordered before there was a plan to plant them and then planted before there was a way to water them. They died. Grass that was seeded on the golf course couldn’t survive on the brackish well water. It had to be replaced…A skeet range was put in that had shooters firing over the bike trail.

When they opened Disneyland in 1956, nothing worked! I’m not sure there’s a larger point here, except to say that America clearly does not always do big things.

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